Monday, March 31, 2008

Review: The 13th Reality: The Journal of Curious Letters by James Dashner

Book: The 13th Reality: The Journal of Curious Letters by James Dashner

Genre: YA Fantasy

Rating: A-

What a fun kids fantasy this book was! Complete with a bunch of cool and quirky characters, some nasty villians and a kid with a misfit problem in his normal life but learns during all his adventures that maybe he's pretty special after all.

My favorite part of this book was all the riddles. I'm pretty stupid when it comes to riddles, so I didn't figure many out (though it was possible if I'd tried harder!) and let the charcter do all the figuring for me, but at one point, just before our hero was getting to it, I said right out loud, there in bed as I was reading, " I got it! I got it! Wait, wait, I need paper!!!" The Mr. looked at me sideways as I rummaged for paper and I said, "HA! I'm getting this BEFORE he does," pointing to Tick there on the front of the book. And sure enough, after flipping around in the book a bit and writing, then reading for a couple more pages, both Tick and I had it! "See!" I said all proudly, showing The Mr. He rolled his eyes and went on with his own reading.

It's stuff like this that makes this book tons of fun, along with a couple of twists and turns and a pretty intense climatic scene thrown in the mix too. Now that I'm done with it, I'll be handing it back over to my 13 year old son to see what he thinks of it. I'm quite sure he'll love it since he's loved all of James Dashner's previous stuff.

Wow, what a ride. When an invisible barrier suddenly descends on this small town, how will the people handle things? Let's just say... not very well! Would it be giving away too much if I say... pretty much EVERYONE dies! And all written in...